<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16441" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY> <DIV><SPAN class=328363718-25052007><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#0000ff size=2>A friend just sent this to me -- seemed appropriate for the Old Piano discussion.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=328363718-25052007><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=328363718-25052007><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#0000ff size=2>by Howard Nemerov, past U.S. Poet Laureate</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=328363718-25052007><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=328363718-25052007><STRONG>To His Piano<BR><BR></STRONG>Old friend, patient of error as of accuracy,<BR>Ready to think the fingerings of thought,<BR>You but a scant year older than I am<BR>With my expectant mother expecting maybe<BR>An infant prodigy among her stars<BR>But getting only little me instead–<BR><BR>To see you standing there for six decades<BR>Containing chopsticks, Fur Elise, and <BR>The Art of Fugue in your burnished rosewood box,<BR>As well as all those years of silence and<BR>The stumbling beginnings the children made,<BR>Who would believe the twenty tons of stress<BR>Your gilded frame's kept stretched out all this while?</SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=328363718-25052007></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=328363718-25052007><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#0000ff size=2>Annie Grieshop</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=328363718-25052007><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#0000ff size=2><A href="http://www.allthingspiano.com">www.allthingspiano.com</A></FONT></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>